Adds the 'Technique/Shield tactics' talent tree as a new generic category available to Bulwarks. Starts unlocked at 1.3 mastery and requires Constitution.

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1)Tempered Will:While your shield is raised you become a nearly impenetrable wall of metal and pure grit, able to divert some of the force of even non-physical assualts.While Block is active, you will gain X% Physical resistance and Y% of all non-Physical incoming damage will be converted to Physical damage. Damage conversion is improved by your Spell Save, and Physical resistance by your Constitution.

2)Relentless Retaliation:Each time you fully block incoming damage, you gain X% attack speed for one turn. This effect can stack up to 8 times. The effect improves with Dexterity. Each attacker can only trigger this effect once per turn. If you know Eternal Guard this restriction is removed.

3)Tactical Defense:Each time you fully block incoming damage, you use the tactical advantage to reduce the remaining cooldown of your inscriptions. This will reduce the cooldown of a random inscription by one turn, and can occur at most X times per turn. This value improves with Constitution.

4)Refleive Block:You are unmatched in your ability to react with your shield. If an attack would deal damage greater than 12% of your maximum life, you raise your shield in an instant, preemptivley reducing the damage by X% of your block value and assuming a blocking stance. This bonus block will not check or trigger Block cooldown. Damage reduction improves with Constitution. This talent has a cooldown.

The motivation behind this tree is pretty straight-forward: Bulwarks are a base class, and any new player is likely to make the assumption that this will be a very durable class that should be fairly forgiving to a new player. This is not really the case. Block is a pretty weak defense option, has a high opportunity cost, and has very confusing mechanics for new payers, inconsistently blocking or not blocking various damage types based on the stats of the shield. My aim is to improve the usefulness and defensive ability of Block without drastically over-hauling the mechanic, while also creating a tree that is noob-friendly. The talents are effective without requiring a lot of thought or strategy, aside from when to use Block, and serve to make Block actually worth-while.

My intention is that this tree be balanced and viable enough to be merged into the base game. I understand that Bulwark can win higher difficulties already and some would argue that they do not need such a tree. I would counter that short of a major overhaul, nothing is going to bring Bulwark in line with other classes power- or defense-wise, so adding an optional tree that lets you improve a mediocre mechanic at the cost of many generics is far from balance-breaking.

I like the idea. I downloaded and was able to start a new game with no problems, so it's probably an add-on conflict (I had zomnibus, nerkarcos effects 1, alchrevision all active).

Thanks for the feedback. Turns out it was, after all, a problem with another addon. Mistakenly, I re-activated the old Neka Effects Display addon, as well as the new one. I really need to just delete that...

I was not/ am not sure about where it should be, accessibility wise. I feel like it has the potential to be fairy powerful, but taxing it with a category point point cost and requiring generics points may be too much. It may be that it would be just fine as a low-level class talent, but locked behind a category point. That's where I'm starting to lean myself, but I'm still open to suggestion, and still feeling it out myself.

For something targeted at new players, these talents are awfully complicated.

Tempered Will could just give resist all for a similar effect, unless using the enemy's physical penetration and interacting with Ward is really important.

In general I dislike "this talent does something new at level X". Breakpoints are bad. I also see no need for Relentless Retaliation or Tactical Defense to do more than one thing in the first place.

Instant Block is crazy powerful, the demon seed that gives it (on a longer cooldown, at that!) is considered better than the one that gives you 35% physical resistance. Being an instant also increases micromanagement. If a Block that takes time can't be powerful enough, I would rather see it turned into a passive that activates whenever you're damaged and it's not on cooldown, like Uncertainty Principle.Just making Relentless Retaliation only increase attack speed would be fine.

Tactical Defense hits a hard cap on its main effect, which is generally a big no-no, and its main effect having two turn_procs is gross. I would just let Eternal Guard be good for once (currently it sucks on Bulwark). Also, please don't make it interact with rank.I would like the secondary effect better if it increased saves instead of giving a fixed shrug off chance. Also, I'd like it better if there weren't a secondary effect.

Defiant Resolve is similar to Last Stand and would work better as a replacement for it, instead of a new talent.

Being generic is fine, there are plenty of generic categories that are exclusive to one class (Ravenous Mind, Hymns, Energy, Demonic Strength, Oppression, Black Magic, Dark Sustenance, Augmented Mobility, Finer Energy Manipulations, Unarmed Training). That said, Bulwark already has enough categories, and its defense can be buffed without adding new ones.

[Relentless Retaliation]Added a check so that the speed boost effect will not be applied when attempting to apply Counterstrike to a target that already has the effect. It will now only be applied once per target, as intended.

For something targeted at new players, these talents are awfully complicated.

Tempered Will could just give resist all for a similar effect, unless using the enemy's physical penetration and interacting with Ward is really important.

In general I dislike "this talent does something new at level X". Breakpoints are bad. I also see no need for Relentless Retaliation or Tactical Defense to do more than one thing in the first place.

Instant Block is crazy powerful, the demon seed that gives it (on a longer cooldown, at that!) is considered better than the one that gives you 35% physical resistance. Being an instant also increases micromanagement. If a Block that takes time can't be powerful enough, I would rather see it turned into a passive that activates whenever you're damaged and it's not on cooldown, like Uncertainty Principle.Just making Relentless Retaliation only increase attack speed would be fine.

Tactical Defense hits a hard cap on its main effect, which is generally a big no-no, and its main effect having two turn_procs is gross. I would just let Eternal Guard be good for once (currently it sucks on Bulwark). Also, please don't make it interact with rank.I would like the secondary effect better if it increased saves instead of giving a fixed shrug off chance. Also, I'd like it better if there weren't a secondary effect.

Defiant Resolve is similar to Last Stand and would work better as a replacement for it, instead of a new talent.

Being generic is fine, there are plenty of generic categories that are exclusive to one class (Ravenous Mind, Hymns, Energy, Demonic Strength, Oppression, Black Magic, Dark Sustenance, Augmented Mobility, Finer Energy Manipulations, Unarmed Training). That said, Bulwark already has enough categories, and its defense can be buffed without adding new ones.

The idea behind Tempered Resolve is that converting a portion of incoming damage to Physical allows it to be Blocked by any shield. If it just gave all-res when blocking, sure, it would reduce the damage of a fireball, say, but it wouldn't Block any of it, which means no Counterstrike, no triggering Relentless Retaliation, or Tactical Defense.

Fair points on the secondary effects. I think somewhere along the line I was thinking I needed to throw in some more Con scaling for some reason, which is where the secondary effect on Tactical Defense came in (I know, totally ridiculous reasoning). Originally I was going to have a talent extend block at some investment level and write a new Con prodigy, but I decided to steer away from that and went with instant block instead. But yeah. Probably all totally unnecessary.

Two turn_procs on Tactical Defense is the result of my being a total amateur coder. Now that you mention it though, I realize I could store everything I need inside a single turn_proc with multiple fields.

Two turn_procs on Tactical Defense is the result of my being a total amateur coder. Now that you mention it though, I realize I could store everything I need inside a single turn_proc with multiple fields.

I wasn't talking about the technical side of it. Rather, I think limiting this sort of effect to once per turn (or twice per turn or whatever) is rarely justified from a game design perspective. It's additional complexity, and in this case all it does is make Eternal Guard worse.

Two turn_procs on Tactical Defense is the result of my being a total amateur coder. Now that you mention it though, I realize I could store everything I need inside a single turn_proc with multiple fields.

I wasn't talking about the technical side of it. Rather, I think limiting this sort of effect to once per turn (or twice per turn or whatever) is rarely justified from a game design perspective. It's additional complexity, and in this case all it does is make Eternal Guard worse.

Ah, I see what you are saying. I felt that inscription-specific cooldown reduction could be too strong without limits of sorts, but I suppose I went a little overboard on constraining it. And it is definitely overly-complex, nevermind the rank scaling and the way I implemented it. I'll take all that into consideration, thanks.

This is pretty darn neat. I like the idea of making this a Generic tree due to Bulwark not having any locked Generics or many point sinks in that area. Also big points for more uses of Con; Unflinching Resolve and Vitality seem to not be enough for this class.

I'm going to try Tempered Will with Power of Money and Spell Shield. This may or may not make Dwarf Bulwark a powerhouse all of a sudden. I can't help but wonder... if Spell Save is stacked high enough will this effectively end up being a Spectral Shield, with 100% of damage being converted to Physical?

Also I wonder if Tactical Defense is great on Ogre which is already great at Bulwark.

I'm going to try Tempered Will with Power of Money and Spell Shield. This may or may not make Dwarf Bulwark a powerhouse all of a sudden. I can't help but wonder... if Spell Save is stacked high enough will this effectively end up being a Spectral Shield, with 100% of damage being converted to Physical?

It's possibly, technically. It shouldn't be easy, because of the diminishing returns on spell save, but, on the other hand, the talent scaling portion may be a bit too high currently. That actually brings up a point I hadn't condsidered; with enough spell save, you might actually get your conversion above 100%, effectively increasing the damage, at least before mitigation. Shouldn't be an issue unless someone really pushes it, and they could fix it by shedding a bit of save, but I will get a fix in for that with the next update.

Right now with 5/5 Tempered Will, 5/5 Power of Money with the full power of it funded, 5/5 Shield Expertise, 1/5 Spell Shield (will try for more but I'm not sure how far, like you said returns are crud), and some Spell Save/relevant stat+ on items I'm at 81%. 82-83% with Resilience on I think.

I think the scaling is just right in that investment will give tangible results yet it's not enough to make 100% easy by any means. Either way though I personally think this talent removes the need for Spectral Shield on a Bulwark (if you're a Dwarf at least).

Right now with 5/5 Tempered Will, 5/5 Power of Money with the full power of it funded, 5/5 Shield Expertise, 1/5 Spell Shield (will try for more but I'm not sure how far, like you said returns are crud), and some Spell Save/relevant stat+ on items I'm at 81%. 82-83% with Resilience on I think.

I think the scaling is just right in that investment will give tangible results yet it's not enough to make 100% easy by any means. Either way though I personally think this talent removes the need for Spectral Shield on a Bulwark (if you're a Dwarf at least).

Thanks, that's excellent feedback That's just about the level I was aiming for; somewhere around 80% if you have a lot of save. Not quite as good as Spectral Shield, but it doesn't take a cat point to get there.

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